Class warfare? No, fairness

Our opinion: The President wants millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes. If that’s too radical, how can the deficit be brought under control?

Only in an America with a Congress hijacked by the opposition to President Barack Obama and so capable of rebutting economic common sense would a proposal to raise taxes on millionaires be “class warfare.”

Yet that’s the dangerous reality that Mr. Obama confronts. A strategy that under better political circumstances would be far less controversial is under siege by Republicans inflexibly resolute in their zeal to kill tax hikes.

No one will pay a dime more in income taxes if the likes of House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continue to have their way — not even the 400,000 or so taxpayers who are literally millionaires.

That’s wrong, on both practical and moral grounds. How can a $1.3 trillion annual deficit be substantially reduced when people who easily could pay more can’t be taxed further? And how fair is that?

Millionaires get off way too easy, one of the very richest of their lot, Warren Buffett, argues.

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice,” he wrote in The New York Times last month (http://tinyurl.com/66x9t27).

It’s a sad country that Mr. Obama leads when his insistence that people making more than $1 million a year pay taxes at the same rate as the middle class is so contentious.

The 10-year, $3 trillion deficit reduction plan that he announced Monday is in similar political straits. Half of it relies on ending the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000, as well as limiting their loopholes and deductions. They would have to once again pay taxes at the rate they did a decade ago, with millionaires also facing a tax increase intended just for them.

Just listen to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Mr. Boehner’s point man in a misguided quest to cut spending without increasing revenue.

“Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” he says of a minimum tax rate for millionaires.

That’s class warfare? Please.

And why wouldn’t such language apply to the $248 billion in Medicare cuts and $72 billion in Medicaid cuts that the President wants?

Or the much deeper cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that Mr. Ryan himself is demanding?

Class warfare? Save the term for several generations worth of policies that have, as the Census Bureau reported last week, more Americans than ever living in poverty and middle-class wages stagnant for the longest time since the Depression.

The political wisdom of Mr. Obama’s plans is still unclear, as are details of a millionaires’ tax. But they are hardly rotten economics.

Now comes a confrontation among the privileged class that occupies the White House and Congress.

“I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” the President says. “We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.”

Good for him. Bring on a battle to not only rein in the deficit, but teach the American public what is and isn’t class warfare.

Since we all have the same rights fairness requires that everyone should have the same obligation with respect to funding the government. What is wanted is that others pay for the services that you want. If the federal government had less money we would have to leave the Middle East. I have no problem with that. This of course would leave New Yorkers with the difficult but honorable task of deciding with the level of state services that they want to be provided by state income taxees

Fairness in property taxation would seen to require that religious institutions be on the property tax roles. Do you know of any attempt to invoke fairness to end the subsidy of churches?

This is all “smoke and mirrors.” Don’t any of these idiots, Warren Buffet, Obama’s teleprompter writers have FACT CHECKERS? Really?

If you look up at IRS.gov, you will find that Buffet’s secretary, the infamous teacher or construction worker that makes $50K/hr is taxed $1,700 plus 15% of the amount over $17,000, or $4,950 for a total tax of $6,650, which is 13.3% of $50K.

Buffet’s dividends are taxed at 15%, but are actually double taxes at 35% and then another 15%, for a composite rate of 44.75%.

Only in America- where the top 5% pay 59% of the taxes and 50% pay no taxes- could someone write an opinion piece like this, obscuring the facts and proclaiming that redistribution of wealth is a law granted right. This president has bullied his way to make his socialist ideas happen- and now when he is opposed, and no longer has control of all of congress, it’s a terrible thing! We- Americans- are fed up with this nonsense and next November will bring about real change- not the unpopular movement towards socialism the inept Mr. Obama has brought to this country.

The financial elites who control Congress through the system of legalized bribery known as lobbying have been waging unremitting class warfare on poor and middle – income Americans for several decades now. One of their main strategies has been to effect changes in the Federal Tax Code, rendering it regressive rather than progressive. In this manner they have been able to successfully manage a massive upward redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle classes unto themeselves.

Republicans didn’t “hijack” the congress. They won the majority in the 2010 election, just as the Democrats did in 2006. Trying to equate your political opposition with America’s enemies by using loaded terms like “hijack,” “terrorists,” and “hostage takers” is as sleazy as it gets, and should be beneath journalists at any level.

Its funny, 30% of my income hits me harder than 30% of a millionaire’s income. Its simple, the haves do not want to be held to the same standards as everyone else. It isn’t class warfare, its total greed and stubborness on account of those who want to keep every greedy penny.

Wow, it’s really interesting that the right wing republicants are more than likely employing individuals to go on websites and continue the echo chambe of lies, specifically, that Obama created this mess and that he alone is responsible for the rise in unemployment. No president in the history of this country has been so vily treated as President Obama. Needless to say, all the attacks are a combination of thinly veiled racism and a concerted effort to wind back the clock to the Guilded Age, when social security, minimum wage, health insurance and so on didn’t exist, all to the benefit of monopolizing fat cats! Obama’s proposals are not class warfare, in fact the opposite, they are put up in order to avoid it!

The congress was not “hijacked” as you editorial idiots claim, the American people spoke and the congress now reflects that. Of course the TU editorial staff believes the American people are too stupid to make such an important decision. The TU editorial board has the right to say and write what they want, but such hostile rhetoric toward the American people is at the very least dangerous and a serious threat to our democracy. The president knows exactly what he is doing; he has executed class warfare in an attempt to mask his massive failings.

I was laid off from my modest-salary job of less than $50,000 dollars a year, from which a third of that went to taxes, and the majority of those taxes were federal. I have since been retained on a part-time basis at $12/hr, and I am still taxed at no less a rate.

This is not the “Land of the Free”, but a land where thugs, when they play according to the ruling gang’s rules, are permitted the privilege of enriching themselves by taking advantage of weaker people. They don’t earn their money, they find ways to take it. There simply is no billionaire who does not owe damages to society for the ways in which he has taken this money, and the argument that they “create jobs” has long been proven for its utter absurdity.

The only reason why billionaires are credited with creating jobs owes to the stranglehold which they now have on our economy. Nearly two and a half centuries ago, American business was owned and run primarily by the farmers, blacksmiths, cobblers, carpenters, and masons who provided such services, but this control was taken from the workers by the most foul, cruel, and often illegal means. Legality hardly justifies anything anyway, when the legal process is controlled by such a perverse ruling class. It’s now far past time to end the unofficial (but officially privileged) aristocracy and return this country’s wealth to the workers – by any means necessary!

The problem here is using the ambiguous term “fair” To me, fair means we are all treated equally, which would mean we all pay the same percentage regardless of income level, social standing or lifestyle choices.

I ask why a couple who decides to engage in the religious ritual of marriage should get a tax break over the couple who simply chooses to live together out of wed lock. Why should those who want large (3 or more children) families be given a break over the more responsible families who have one or two children.

So yes TU Editors, I want fairness in taxation for ALL, not just an assault on the wealthy.

This AP story explains it a bit better for those who want to believe Obama’s word instead of getting the facts straight. He wants to be reelected. We all know that. He wants to demonize those who have succeeded and for all to feel badly for the rest. This is the US. We want people to succeed in life. But we are now at the point where success breeds contempt. If Obama does not like the tax system, then overhaul it. Tax from income and tax from investments are taxed very differently. He knows that but he counts on the rest not knowing the difference.

Phil – I’m curious, how did the “media” get us into this mess? If you are going to throw a statement like that out there, at least offer some clue as to what you are inferring, otherwise it just appears to be a disconnected, mindless statement. Personally, I don’t see how the media has caused the economic disparity, that has caused 1/2 of ALL wealth in this nation to end up concentrated in the pockets of about 4000 people, but maybe you are privy to information that 100% of the rest of us just do not have.

Kendo – Perhaps if we examine how a small clique of ultra-rich, using their corporate superstructure, has been able to get so many to blindly subscribe to ultra-rightist doctrinaire dogma, and then get them to actually vote to screw themselves to the wall, in service to the holders of obscene wealth, and you may start to understand why the term “Hijack” might apply to a political system made up of a generally clueless electorate being manipulated by people who have sold out for the crumbs the rich drop them from tables, at which they will never get sit themselves.

Don – So socialism for the rich and free-enterprise for the rest of us, is just fine with you?

gunga dan – The middle-class is losing ground (and disappearing) because they are the only ones left, in the rigged game the rich have created, who have anything remaining in their pockets worth the effort to steal. That they have gotten all you clueless dolts to blame the poor (why the rich keep them that way in the first place) is just icing on the stone hard cake they are serving up to America, and you are buying it.

Let’s just stop spending. That will kill more jobs that tax hikes any day of the week. <–sarcasm.

One millionaire pays a million more in taxes in one year or the Gov't spends a million less. Which one has a bigger impact on jobs, and in what direction? Captain obvious; can you answer that one for us?

The gov't spending a million less is a loss of jobs. The millionaire taxed a million more means the six bedroom yacht for the trip to the mediteranean becomes a two bedroom yacht. HMMMMMM ……

iknowthetruthismine, I have no desire to live off of someone else, so I am not interested in politicians who promise to take money from the “rich” and give it to me. If that means I’m voting against my own interest, so be it.

In terms of a “clueless electorate being manipulated” and “sold out for the crumbs of the rich” “from tables at which they will never sit” (sorry, I tried my best to fix your mess of a sentence), don’t you think you more accurately describe poor people spending their entire lives on welfare, living in crime infested and drug ridden public housing projects, after putting their faith in liberalisms Great Society, and yet still voting 95% Democrat? Talk about a clueless electorate. After almost 3 years of Obama this is the worst the poor and working class have ever had it in my lifetime!

I can see why no one put their name on the top of the page. an editorial this partisan, and this incorrect should be hidden from public view.
The rich already pay their fair share. All you people who cry over the 15% capital gains rate fail to mention that these investors already paid 36% on the money thaty they used to make their investments with. So an investor who starts with $1 million loses $360,000 to federal taxes, and another 8% or so to NY, which is another 51,000. So if he invests the $590,000 that is left and makes a 20% profit over the next 5 years, he will pay a 15% tax on the $118,000 he made, which is $17,700.
So, Mr. Millionaire started with $1,000,000 and ends up with $689,000. He is still in the 30% tax bracket. Rich people pay more than their fair share, they also pay the share of the 51% of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes. These same people are now only paying half of the FICA tax, also. IS that fair.

The people with the money create the jobs and provide capital. Raising taxes does nothing but hinder capitalism.

I know the TU is liberal, but Chairman Mao even laughed when he read this.

Republicans trot out the “Class Warfare” big lie to hide their own war on the middle and lower classes. Since the deficit is primarily the result of the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan maybe we should put the country on a war footing like we were in WWII. The highest tax rate was 90%.

Kendo – It is not the fault of society that you are comfortable with the rich skimming off the top at a rate that necessitates the creation of a permanent underclass for you to blame for all of our ills. Blaming the victims, while the rich use the government to steal from you (when they control it) and as a whipping-boy (when they don’t), and getting you to buy into it with cheap, simplistic, rigid, and absolutist Ayn Rand justified dogma, is not a measure of society’s failure, but of yours.

Phil – If you are going to wallow in the dogmatic propaganda pool, you can’t really expect me to wade in with you. There are a lot of seats at the table, but I will not pull out a chair for those who belong at the kid’s table instead. The mainstream media has been cowed by the corporate propaganda machine to the point where they no longer take any stand about anything (unless tricked), and if they did, it would certainly be against the forces you blindly serve, that are trying to turn us into an elite ruled, two class, uneducated, self-serving feudal type, flag-waving, plutocracy.

Iknow….I never put a single person in a slum or a ghetto with little chance of ever escaping, so its hardly my failure. And it is not “societies” failure either. Liberal social policies created the permanent underclass, and administer the apparatus that keeps them there. And those same liberals pretend to be saviors of the poor when in reality they are the jailers.

To those who think they know what “fair” is vs “an assault on the wealthy” – nobody is wealthy without assaulting the poor!

Anyway, nobody suggested destroying the rich altogether, but they need to get used to living with three mansions instead of four or five, and sell a few of their cars and boats so that those who work all day can have the dignity which they deserve (one reliable personal transportation vehicle). And if they don’t want to create jobs under such conditions, then it’s time for the middle class to take back their own hard-earned money which the rich have stolen from them, with which they will create their own jobs! It’s far past time to kill the obscene trickle-down myth – it’s every bit as foul as a rich man relieving himself on the poor man who is underfoot!

Kendo – The underclass, with emphasis on those in the “slum or a ghetto” were placed in their position by a grateful nation that made home ownership for the returning soldiers of WWII, through generous loan programs that, and this is the key part, WERE NOT MADE AVAILABLE TO PEOPLE OF COLOR. As the slums and ghettos emptied of Whites, they were soon replaced by people who, in search of jobs, or an escape from a still bigoted South, inherited crumbling schools, inadequate and racially limited unavailable jobs, and a social structure that mirrored the bigotries of the pre-war years. Before you condemn us evil liberals for their plight, it is necessary to see what Lilly-white 1950s Republican America did to them that necessitated Democratic intervention. What, pray tell, has your side done to fix the problem except hand them an anchor and pushed them off the pier? You want to argue with me, you better get a better grasp on history.